The sound of silence

August 2024 | Cover story

Why has the media ignored what legal experts say is one of the worst cases of union-busting in Japan’s history?

You might think that the smashing of a union in a country where unions are constitutionally protected would be newsworthy, all the more so when the blunt tactics used have astonished constitutional experts. But the apparently coordinated campaign against the Kansai District Ready-Mixed Concrete Union has received almost zero serious coverage in the Japanese mainstream media.

Eighty-nine members of the union, known as Kan'nama, have been arrested in five prefectures on what many scholars say are charges cooked-up by police. Yuji Yukawa, the chairman of the union, has already been sentenced to four years for “forcible obstruction of business” and “extortion” (prosecutors demanded 10 years). He and his colleagues face multiple other charges. 

Out on bail, Yukawa made his case to the FCCJ on July 18. 

“It is blatant union-busting,” he said. Yukawa and his lawyer, Masahito Nakai, claim that police have intimidated hundreds of other union members into quitting, and that the anti-yakuza divisions of several prefectural forces have been assigned to prosecute the case. “Effectively the police and prosecutors have made normal union activities illegal,” Yukawa said.

Yukawa, whose appeal is going through the Osaka High Court, was repeatedly arrested across several prefectures of the Kinki region and indicted seven times. He was detained for 644 days, during which he was banned from contact with anyone but his lawyer. Like many union members, he says he was told by police to quit the union as a condition of being granted bail.

Prosecutors in Shiga and Kyoto have demanded he serve 18 years in prison - “about the same number of years for murder cases,” he said. 

The union claims that concrete industry bosses and the government are working with police and prosecutors to push it into oblivion. Kan’nama has long had a reputation for militancy. Unlike most Japanese unions, which are company-based (and therefore structurally invested in the interests of their employers), it represents workers across multiple firms in the industry and has a reputation for taking an aggressive stance in negotiations over pay and conditions.

The union has a history of clashing with employers, sometimes violently. Two of its officials have been killed by gangsters hired by construction companies. One of its regular activities was driving its trucks outside the homes of construction bosses and protesting loudly. In the 1980s, the head of the Japan Business Association, Bunpei Otsuki, called the spread of the union’s tactics a threat “to the very foundation of capitalism”.

The targeting of Kan’nama might be considered a compelling news story. More than 40 lawyers are involved in the case, according to Nakai. The legal implications have alarmed labor law experts, dozens of whom have called the repression of the union “unprecedented” and the worst since World War II. Lawyer Yuichi Kaido, who is representing the union in a lawsuit against the state demanding compensation for the arrests and prosecutions, says the attack on Article 28 of Japan’s Constitution (guaranteeing workers the right to organize collective action) is “extraordinary.”

Yet the saga has attracted little serious media attention. A sprinkling of stories, mainly in the Kansai regional media, have noted the court verdicts without digging around in the background or examining the implications. Online, multiple amateur YouTube videos make the case for and against the union. Nakai noted that an animated video bashing the union, viewed 370,000 times, was ordered to be taken down by the courts.

One reason for the paucity of press coverage is that the employees of Japanese newspapers and TV stations do not understand trade union activities, said Makoto Watanabe, editor in chief of Tansa, the online investigative journalism website. “They are loyal to the company, not to their profession as journalists.” Watanabe points out that employees at Japanese newspapers and TV stations are also represented by company unions. “They have no concept of improving the industry as a whole through labor unions,” he said.

Watanabe also blames the press club system. “Press clubs for the police and prosecutors are closed. Within these clubs, reporters cozy up to the police and prosecutors. They do not criticize the police and prosecutors who are suppressing the union branch.” He says it would be better if reporters outside of these press clubs, such as those in charge of labor issues, covered the attack on Kan’nama, but they don’t feel up to challenging the police and prosecutors in charge.

Nakai said prosecutors have tried to paint the union as a criminal organization. “I believe the prosecutors think Kan’nama is ‘too strong’, and therefore Article 28 of the constitution does not need to be applied in this case. This is clearly wrong,” he said. Media coverage of the case had been minimal, he said, but added that the legal team had at least managed to impress on some journalists that Kan’nama is a union, and therefore entitled to legal protection.

Even if you buy the prosecution’s case that union members were engaged in “harassing behavior” by, for example, distributing leaflets at construction sites demanding compliance with labor laws, the story begs for a deeper, more detailed take. 

One of the few journalists to investigate the case, Takenobu Mieko, a former staff reporter at the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s flagship liberal newspaper, previously said that most senior editors had shunned the story because it was considered “difficult”. Journalists who take the authorities’ claims against the union at face value will be criticized by liberals but rejecting that view means going up against the police and powerful prosecutors – and losing access to official sources.

Genki Shimada, president of Imasu Sangyo, a manufacturer of ready-mix concrete, told the FCCJ that a story on its legal battles with Sumitomo Osaka Cement after claims that it tried to pressure it to fire a member of the union, was deleted from the Asahi’s website. “I stated that the right to join labor unions is protected in Japan, so I was unable to comply,” he said. The result of his non-compliance, he added, is that “we are unable to purchase cement within the Osaka district”.  

As for who ordered the takedown of the union, Yukawa said that while nobody had come forward to take responsibility, it was clearly someone in a position of considerable authority in the central government. “You have to question whether Japan is really a democracy,” he said.

David McNeill is professor of communications and English at University of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, and co-chair of the FCCJ’s Professional Activities Committee. He was previously a correspondent for the Independent, the Economist and the Chronicle of Higher Education.